In a rare spurt of appearances, he enjoyed the adulation of thousands of enthusiastic conservatives at political gatherings in two states.

On July 14, he publicly grilled most of the top-tier Republican presidential candidates—with the exception of former President Donald Trump—at the Family Leadership Summit in Iowa. As the nation’s first state to caucus, it’s been the midwestern mecca of political activity in recent weeks.

Then, Mr. Carlson caught a flight to Florida, where he lives in cooler times of the year, to speak the next day at the Turning Point Action Conference in West Palm Beach.

Speaker line-ups at Turning Point events often read like a who’s who of conservative politics, sometimes even drawing leading figures from other countries.

This time, the two-day conference attracted about 6,000 people—mostly college-age conservatives—from around the country to hear from GOP firebrands. Attendees also mingled, attended Republican strategy workshops on winning elections, and shopped for patriotic merchandise and Trump gear.

Mr. Carlson was one of the crowd favorites.

Tight Security for Trump Speech

On Day 1, conference-goers crammed into the Palm Beach Convention Center’s main hall after spending hours in line. They inched forward in the blazing sun, waiting to be inspected in screenings overseen by the U.S. Secret Service.

Once inside, attendees heard from a string of outspoken supporters of Mr. Trump, the reason for the tight security. His champions included congressmen Byron Donalds and Matt Gaetz, both Republicans representing Florida.

“We ride or die with Donald John Trump,” Mr. Gaetz said, above the roaring crowd, when it was his turn to speak. He also proclaimed he’d be introducing “in the coming days a national prayer-in-school law,” an announcement that brought more raucous cheers.

Also riling up the crowd was Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who spoke in the standing-room-only space. He said he’s been criticized for not attacking his chief opponent, apparently alluding to Mr. Trump.

“I’m not running against anyone in this race,” Mr. Ramaswamy said. “I’m running for our country.”

The 37-year-old political newcomer received an enthusiastic standing ovation as he left the stage.

‘All the Cool People are Here’

As Mr. Carlson stepped out to plumes of yellow pyrotechnics shooting up from the front of the stage, attendees were on their feet again, cheering and holding up phones to capture video of the moment.

“Thank you,” he repeated over and over, shaking his head and chuckling. “I don’t think most unemployed people get a reception like that.”

As the cheering and clapping continued, he scanned the audience, clearly recognizing some, and exclaiming, “Roger Stone! All the cool people are here. It’s, like, unbelievable.”

As if surprised by the unrelenting chorus of whooping, he said with incredulity, “Wow. I haven’t been around a ton of people in a while. But I never miss this event. Ever. And I meet the nicest people, really, that I ever meet at these.”

In contrast, Mr. Carlson expressed disdain for the work he’d done the day before discussing presidential candidates’ campaign platforms. He usually despises politicians, Mr. Carlson said, because “they tend to be soulless,” with sad personal lives, seeking to “win affirmation” from strangers, which he finds “pathetic.”

In person, though, they’re “charming,” he said. “I like almost all of them when I meet them.”

He didn’t want “to attack anyone on personal grounds” but “it’s tempting,” he laughed, as the crowd chanted, “Do it! Do it!”

Instead, he said, as if he couldn’t resist, he wanted to offer “general observations, which I think are more edifying than just, like, savaging Mike Pence.”

The crowd cheered more, egging him on. But Mr. Carlson insisted it “would be wrong because it’s too easy.”

Mr. Pence, the former vice president under Mr. Trump, stunned many conservatives when he argued in his Iowa forum appearance the day before that the United States has been too slow to provide tanks and pilot training to Ukraine.

Looking incredulous, Mr. Carlson stopped him and began describing the faltering economy of the United States and the country’s escalating crime, public filth, and suicide rates.

“Where’s the concern for the United States in that?” Mr. Carlson demanded during the interview.

“That’s not my concern,” Mr. Pence replied. “Tucker, I’ve heard that routine from you before but that’s not my concern.”

“I’m running for President in the United States because I think this country is in a lot of trouble. I think Joe Biden has weakened America at home and abroad. And as President of the United States, we’re going to restore law and order in our cities. We’re going to secure our border. We’re going to get this economy moving again. And we’re going to make sure that we have men and women on our courts at every level that will stand for the right to life and defend all the God given liberties enshrined in our Constitution,” he said.

“Anybody that says we can’t be the leader of the free world and solve our problems at home has a pretty small view of the greatest Nation on Earth. We can do both.”

Lesson Learned

He learned much from his day of interviews in Iowa, Mr. Carlson told the Turning Point crowd. One was that what Republicans in Washington “actually care about” are “very different from the things that matter to the people who vote for them.”

He had believed that would change back in 2016, when the politicians saw that “Republicans elected a guy basically on the promise to blow up the Republican Party,” he said.

But even the election of Mr. Trump hasn’t turned many elected politicians to align with the people they represent, he has since observed.

He also realized that “almost everybody in elected office in the Republican Party has internalized the other side’s rules for debate.”

There’s “no more self-defeating way to go into politics or life than to accept the terms that your enemies offer before the conversation’s even begun,” Mr. Carlson said. “Because there’s really no way of winning.”

He used the example of the government’s responses to COVID-19, such as mandating masking, lockdowns, and vaccines. Most people went along with leaders’ demands, he said.

Those who resisted or questioned the policies were deemed “moral criminals—they’re outlaws,” he said. So they were censored, silenced.

The War in Ukraine

The same is happening when anyone questions the war in Ukraine, Mr. Carlson said. It’s assumed all will see “one side is bad and one side is virtuous,” he said. And it’s “completely fair” to see Russia as bad and Ukraine as good, he admitted. But that’s not the point, he argued.

The point is that Americans have a “fundamental right to choose who they hate. No one is allowed to force you to be mad at somebody else.”

Yet, despite the fact that Russia hasn’t killed any Americans in the war, he said, many conservatives are desperate to send more expensive weapons, as well as deadly “cluster bombs,” to Ukraine.

It’s all to preserve democracy there, proponents of that view say. But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said he’ll have to suspend elections because of the war.

And “there are clergy in Ukraine who are being thrown in prison, convents raided, nuns kicked out, priests handcuffed, thrown in jail!” Mr. Carlson said.

He said he asked a “self-appointed Christian leader,” who has spent his life fighting for religious freedom, about that.

“And he said with a straight face, ‘Well they had the wrong views.’”

“Is that freedom?” Mr. Carlson challenged. “No, that’s insane!”

The same Christian leader argued that Ukraine needs weapons donated by the Unites States and that we “need to do this because that’s what leadership looks like,” Mr. Carlson recalled.

That’s a “disgusting” view, Mr. Carlson said, contrasting it to a father’s leadership in breaking up fights between siblings.

“If you’re the leader, the last thing you do is sow more chaos,” he said. “You stop the chaos. Leadership is bringing order and regularity and predictability to a chaotic scene.”

And yet, in providing unending support to Ukraine, that’s what, “in the name of American leadership, this administration [of President Joe Biden], with the full participation of the Republican Party, is foisting on the world.”

Mr. Trump, on the other hand, “is clear on this,” that he wants to stop the war, he added. “And they hate him for it.”

Washington elites want to keep others from participating in foreign-policy decisions, he said. But citizens should have a right to question war, saying, “You’re doing this in my name, with my money, and potentially my children.”

It’s reasonable to want to help Ukraine, he said. But the problem is that people in this country are shut down when they disagree. Russia has been painted as the enemy and Americans are “not allowed” to think otherwise, he said.

And “once you are prevented from thinking something, you are completely controlled by the person who’s convinced you of that.”

Problems at Home 

More maddening is that politicians seem to ignore real problems here at home, according to Mr. Carlson. They don’t seem to notice the 100,000 Americans who die each year after being poisoned by fentanyl made in Mexico. It floods into this country with illegal immigrants who stream across the unsecured southern border, he said.

They don’t seem to see that the quality of life in America is getting worse, he added. There’s more homelessness, filth, and graffiti, suggesting “we’ve given up, we don’t care.”

“We’re allowing people who create nothing to destroy what we’ve built and we’re not fighting back,” he railed. “Grafitti is one step from total society collapse. Period.”

Allowing graffiti, Mr. Carlson said, means “we have no self-respect, at all. We don’t care enough about our civilization to keep it clean, to keep it pretty.”

Still, many will argue graffiti is art, he said, and “you’re not allowed to think” otherwise.

So “staying unaffected by the propaganda—that’s like the main goal of my life,” he said. “You can’t allow the propagandists to set the terms.”

“Consider the things you’re not allowed to say” now in this country, he said, pointing to the controversy over the Jan. 6 unrest at the U.S. Capitol.

People participating felt the 2020 election had been stolen “and they were really mad,” he said.

But it quickly was deemed a “racist insurrection,” and people became furious if others didn’t agree. That was troubling to Mr. Carlson.

Anyone who tried to talk about their concerns was “de-platformed, de-banked, basically hounded out of public life in America, bankrupted, in a lot of cases put in jail,” he said.

“Fired!” someone in the crowd shouted.

“Yea, or fired,” Mr. Carlson said, laughing along with the crowd.

“Sorry,” he said, putting his hands to his temples and grinning. “I was so into it that I lost all self-awareness for a minute.”

‘Thought Crimes’

On a June 7 podcast with English comedian Russell Brand, Mr. Carlson said he doesn’t know why he was fired suddenly by Fox News.

But his questioning of whether the federal government has been honest about Jan. 6 widely is one of the speculated likely cause for his termination.

For anyone wanting to explore alternative views on Jan. 6, “that conversation was literally banned,” he said at the Turning Point event. “It’s the guidelines of most social media companies that you can’t have that conversation.”

But a country that doesn’t allow discussions about “the process of electing its leaders is not a democracy, by definition,” he said. “You can’t have a democracy without free speech. Period.”

Meanwhile, serious crimes go unpunished, he said, such as defrauding investors of billions of dollars, or “burning down buildings, impoverishing people, starting totally counterproductive wars we can’t win that kill a lot of our citizens, leaving the border open so seven million people can walk across—those are not small things.”

And “what are the crimes that are punished?” he asked. “Thought crimes. Thinking the wrong things. Having the wrong beliefs. Saying unapproved words.”

And when words are deemed “wrong,” he’s realized, “those words are always true.”

He warned against “the people who censor your words and thoughts.”

He also warned against getting overwhelmed by reports that seem to be “the Mt. Everest of lunacy,” such as that men can give birth or breastfeed infants.

Where is Tucker Now?

Since being fired by Fox, Mr. Carlson has released nine episodes of what’s known as Tucker on Twitter. Most have been between five to 18 minutes long.

The latest, released on July 11, is a two-and-a-half-hour interview with the controversial social media mega-influencer Andrew Tate.

Mr. Tate is on house arrest at his estate in Romania after spending 92 days in what he describes as a cockroach-infested jail. He and his brother were arrested in December for what he says are fake human trafficking and rape charges. The Tate brothers now are suing their accusers, asking a Palm Beach County judge for $5 million in damages.

In the interview, Mr. Tate suggests that his arrest was an attempt to silence him because of his message to followers, urging men to be physically strong and independent minded.

It’s a theme Mr. Carlson repeated to young conservatives in his 45-minute address at the Turning Point event. Diversions, he warned, are concocted by those in power “so we don’t notice they’re looting the country.”

Seeking to cover up their actions, they defend absurd positions with ferocity, he said. That’s so those with objections won’t push back on topics, such as the war in Ukraine, COVID-19 policies, and the Jan. 6 unrest.

“It’s not by accident,” he said, as he yielded the stage to Mr. Trump. “Trust me.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report. Article cross-posted from our premium news partners at The Epoch Times.

Appearing with his wife, Casey, he aimed to connect with voters one last time before Tuesday.

DeSantis appears to lead against his Democrat challenger, former Congressman Charlie Crist, by 11 points, according to a mid-October poll by Florida Atlantic University. The poll suggests DeSantis has an overall approval rating of 53 percent.

But he hasn’t been counting on that.

On Nov. 4, his campaign announced that its well-organized army of volunteers had knocked on the doors of two million homes to reach Florida voters.

The night before DeSantis embarked on his last push to reach voters around the state, he made good on a promise to visit a college campus smack dab in the middle of rural North Florida.

The rally, originally planned earlier in the campaign, had been postponed due to Hurricane Ian.

About 1,200 supporters were greeted upon arrival at Florida Gateway College by an oversized American flag and a Florida flag, both undulating high over the driveway, suspended between the extended arms of four bucket trucks.

Fans of the governor ambled in wearing cowboy boots, jeans, and ball caps. About half raised their hands when asked by DeSantis to indicate if they’d already voted. The other half poked palms skyward when asked if they preferred to cast ballots on Election Day.

“I’ve spent four years fighting for you, and now you guys get one day to come out and fight for me,” DeSantis encouraged.

As has been his style throughout the campaign, he ignored his opponent, former Congressman Charlie Crist, a Democrat. Crist previously served as a Republican governor before registering as an Independent in an unsuccessful bid to run for U.S. Senate. Until his recent resignation, he’s served the last five years as a Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives.

But DeSantis didn’t talk about that.

Instead, he launched right into his favorite campaign topic—what he calls the “failed policies” of President Joe Biden. DeSantis is widely expected to run against Biden in 2024, if he can earn the Republican Party’s nomination. So far, he’s deftly demurred on the subject.

When asked about a hypothetical match-up in the October poll, voters chose DeSantis over Biden, 48 percent to 42 percent.

Biden visited the state on Nov. 1 to stump for Crist and other Democratic candidates. In his remarks, DeSantis drew guffaws from his supporters two days later, when he mockingly said he should have offered to pay for Biden to extend his visit through to Election Day.

“Do I have to declare that as an in-kind contribution to my campaign?” DeSantis jeered.

He said his reaction to Biden’s planned rally appearance for Crist was, “Are you telling me he’s coming down here and reminding Floridians that Democrats in this state vote with him 100 percent of the time? OK. Go ahead! In fact, I should make the offer: ‘Spend the rest of the campaign in Florida! We’ll pay for you; we’ll find a place to keep you, put you up. We’ll fund everything. Please go out and tell everybody about how the Democrats in the state are in lockstep with your failed policy.’”

Biden Policies

For the next 46 minutes, DeSantis tackled Biden relentlessly, bringing up sore spots for Americans, such as inflation and the so-called Inflation Reduction Act. The bill’s name shows lawmakers were “insulting our intelligence,” DeSantis said.

The legislation, among other things, adds 87,000 gun-toting agents to the Internal Revenue Service roster.

They’re not going to go after “liberals in Hollywood and Manhattan,” DeSantis predicted.

“Those IRS agents are gonna go after people like you. They’re gonna go after people who don’t have a fleet of accountants or lawyers, and they’re gonna use the power of government to crush small businesses, to crush sole proprietors, to crush a handyman who may be doing work around the community.

“And I just say that any member of Congress that voted for those 87,000 IRS agents should be required to be audited by the IRS,” he said, causing the room to erupt in cheers.

“Why don’t we do 87,000 Border Patrol agents?”

He eviscerated Biden over his policies that have allowed illegal immigrants to flood across the Southern border with Mexico, many bringing in deadly Fentanyl causing the deaths of Americans.

He berated Biden for fuel shortages, rising costs of groceries, and the fear Americans have living in communities that no longer feel safe. He scorned progressive policies to defund police, yet allow criminals to commit crimes without fear of incarceration.

‘God and Family’

Charles Welch, a colonel with the Florida Department of Corrections, runs a state prison in Lake Butler. He’s always held conservative values that focus on “God and family,” he told The Epoch Times. But he’s not been the sort to attend political rallies.

“This was my first, and I thought it was phenomenal,” he grinned, as he headed for his car with his wife, who held a DeSantis yard sign.

The governor’s support of law enforcement has meant one salary increase for him already, and another promised soon, at a time of pressure from an increased cost of living.

He was impressed, he said, by the governor’s demeanor—”calm, cool, collected, and confident.”

DeSantis earned more cheers at the rally as he touted his now-famous pushback against federal pandemic policies. He recalled unrelenting criticism he faced for allowing kids back into schools, allowing businesses to reopen, banning vaccine passports and mandates, and more.

“I was taking a lot of arrows,” he said. “My whole view of leadership is, I have to be more concerned with saving your jobs than I do with protecting my own.”

He predicted that mandated COVID-19 vaccines for children would “take off right after the elections. The good thing is, you guys have me.”

He continued over applause, “We worked with the Legislature, and we prohibited any COVID shot mandates for school children. Schools can’t do it” in Florida.

He expressed frustration with how pandemic “overreactions” forced many to die alone, as loved ones were blocked from visiting hospitals and nursing homes. He signed legislation preventing that from happening again.

He bemoaned how frontline workers—dubbed heroes at the beginning of the pandemic—later were fired for choosing not to get the COVID jab.

“With the COVID stuff, we made a decision that we weren’t going to try to grind people down with these mandates. We wanted to lift people up. We wanted to find ways to lift people’s spirits.”

He spoke of the massive influx since then of new residents and tourists coming to Florida, including elected officials, escaping their own state’s lockdowns.

“We really served as a refuge of sanity when this whole world went mad in the last few years.”

Rejecting Woke Ideology

DeSantis touted policies and legislation that rejected woke ideology, and put parents back in charge of raising their children.

He spoke about his refusal to back away from the Parental Rights in Education bill, misleadingly dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill by opponents, even after Disney demanded it.

“We run the state on the best interests of the people of Florida,” he said. “We do not delegate our leadership to a California-based corporation. We lead, and we do what’s right. And we don’t care about corporate pressure or any other media pressure. So they thought I was gonna back down. They thought wrong.”

He talked about the state ban on biological males competing as transgender athletes against biological females. And when sports leagues threatened to protest by refusing to hold competitions in the state, DeSantis said he was unperturbed.

“I was like, ‘Go ahead. Make my day. What do I care?’”

He spoke about the state Board of Medicine’s recent decision to strip physicians of their medical licenses if they perform sex-change operations on minors.

And, “we’ve done things like ban critical race theory in our K through 12 schools. Our schools are not teaching kids to hate our country or hate each other. We’re going to make sure to teach the real history. We’re going to make sure to teach about the Constitution. They’re gonna learn about our founding fathers, our founding principles. They’re going to learn what it means to be an American and how lucky we are.”

And on Nov. 7, he noted, new legislation mandates an annual day for students “to learn about the horrors of the communist regimes throughout history. We’re gonna teach the truth.”

He continued over applause, “I think that when students get the real truth on that, they’re gonna feel very, very happy that they are Americans and are able to grow up in the United States of America.”

He softened as he mentioned his three young children, and his wife, who announced in February that she had conquered breast cancer.

He spoke of how she’s raised $52 million to help victims of Hurricane Ian. And he mentioned a campaign commercial she created without any input from him or consultants. It’s nothing like the “typical phony garbage,” he said.

He asserted that “wokeness” is taking over the country. He warned that the Nov. 8 election would decide if left-wing ideology will be allowed to pack the U.S. Supreme Court, abolish the electoral college, turn Washington, D.C. into a state with two U.S. Senators, eliminate voter ID, and mandate ballot harvesting.

In an effort to block that, he posted support earlier that day on Twitter support for Maine incumbent Gov. Paul LePage, and a cavalcade of Trump-endorsed Republican candidates.

One post showered praise on retired Gen. Don Bolduc, running for U.S. Senate in New Hampshire. Another urged support for Arkansas gubernatorial candidate Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a Republican who served as an unflappable White House Press Secretary under Trump.

He encouraged voters to elect gubernatorial candidates Mark Ronchetti in New Mexico, and Derek Schmidt, in Kansas. And he endorsed Wisconsin incumbent U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, and Tim Michels, a businessman running for governor of the state.

Ohioans need to elect businessman J.D. Vance to the U.S. Senate, DeSantis posted, and he urged support for the reelection of the state’s governor, Kevin Stitt.

Pennsylvanians, he posted, should vote for retired U.S. Army Col. Doug Mastriano for governor and Dr. Mehmet Oz for U.S. Senate. and he urged Arizonans to support former newscaster Kari Lake for governor and venture capitalist Blake Masters for U.S. Senate.

He promoted Nevada’s former attorney general, Adam Laxalt, for U.S. Senate. And he’s endorsed a slew of other Republicans in high-profile races, including Trump-endorsee Lee Zeldin, who’s challenging New York Gov. Kathy Hochul.

The results of the upcoming election matter tremendously, he insisted.

“The last few years have shown us our freedom’s a lot more fragile than anything a lot of us would have said even four or five years ago.”

He added, “One of the things I’m proudest of is, with me at the helm, and what we’ve done in the state of Florida, we’ve been a roadblock to all these people who want to change our country for the worse. We have stood strong as the citadel of freedom.

“Florida is the place where woke goes to die.”

Article cross-posted from our premium news partners at The Epoch Times.